MoD web blunder says Trident vulnerable to "disaffected sailors"

A blunder by the Ministry of Defence staff meant that secret information about nuclear submarines was accidentally made available for the world to see online.

The MoD made the document available, which gave information about nuclear reactors for future replacements for the British Trident nuclear fleet, after anti-nuclear campaigners filed a Freedom of Information request.

The accident occurred after parts of top secret details on a document posted online were wrongly blacked out by staff.

Although large sections of the document detailing the weaknesses in current submarines were blacked out, it was found that these were easily retrievable by cutting-and-pasting the document elsewhere.

This is because although several whole pages of the document had been blacked out by MoD staff highlighting them in black, by changing the background colour and copying the text the words became visible.

Thanks to the blunder, avid readers found that “Trident subs were vulnerable to accidents, which could be triggered by a disaffected sailor.” Details of the US nuclear sub fleet’s safety measures were also included in the document.

Of course it was a journalist who found out.

This isn’t the first time the MoD has slipped up. In 2008 the department lost an entire server, while over two years 340 laptops have been lost. It’s also had secrets leaked on Facebook.